Justin started to sit up, and Alex jumped from her chair, spilling the book onto the floor, put her hands on his chest and pushed down lightly. "Don't try to sit up," she said, smiling and crying at the same time. "Oh, Justin... I'm so glad you woke up! I love you!"

His eyes were open, but only halfway, and his gaze was glassy as he looked up at Alex. "I love you too. Don't cry. Why are you crying?" He started to lift his arm to touch her face, then hissed through his teeth. "Oh... oh, fuck," he let out, surprising Alex and Harper both. "My shoulder hurts."

"Just stay still," Harper said. "I'll get the nurse." She moved away as Alex nodded gratefully to her, then looked back at Justin again.

Alex just kept smiling, moved her hand up to touch Justin's face, stroking his cheek. "I've been so worried."

"Worried?" He blinked, looking puzzled. "What about?"

"What about? What about?" Alex made her first real laugh in two days, leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. "About you. You got hit by a car. Don't you remember?"

"A car? No." Justin shook his head a little, then winced. "But judging from how I'm feeling, I believe you."

The nurse - a different one from in the morning - moved in on the other side of Justin, said, "Excuse me. Sir, I need to ask you a few questions."

"What? Oh, hi. I'm Justin. Not Sir Justin." Alex covered her face as she tried to keep from giggling at that.

"That's very good, Justin. How old are you?"

"Nineteen," he answered, then licked his lips. "Can I have some water?"

"Of course," the nurse said, "I've got some right here." She lifted a plastic cup with a straw up in front of Justin, said, "Use your left hand, and sip slowly. Your right collarbone was broken, so you'll need to not use that arm for anything right now. You haven't had any pain medicine, since you've been comatose, but a doctor will be up shortly to examine you, and he'll prescribe you some once he's decided what it's safe to give you. Now, can you tell me where you live?"

As the nurse continued with her questions, checking how aware and oriented Justin was, Alex simply watching him and smiling, feeling incredibly relieved that he was awake and seemed okay - a little loopy, maybe, but okay. "Oh," she said then, "I need to go call Mom and Dad... they should know you're awake too."

She started to get up, reluctantly letting go of Justin's hand, but Harper put a hand on her shoulder, pushed down. "No. You stay here. I'll go call them."

"Thanks," Alex said, and settled back down into her chair, took Justin's hand as Harper walked out into the hallway - and then she let go of his hand again and stood quickly, saying "I'll be right back," as she did.

Alex hurried out into the hallway and turned toward the phone, broke into a run to catch Harper before she got to it. "Wait, Harper! Umm... we need to talk before you call them."

"What?" Harper turned back to Alex and frowned. "What about?"

"Well... about five months ago, I had a little accident with the duplication spell, and... there's two of me. And Mom and Dad don't know. So you can't say that I'm here."

Harper stared at Alex for a moment, then shook her head quickly. "What? There's two of you? And..." She stopped then, eyes widening as she realized the implications. "You've been living with Justin since then, haven't you? And... and your duplicate is the one living at home. Oh my God, Alex, how could you not tell me this?" Harper stomped angrily on the floor, then crossed her arms, staring hard at Alex. "I'm supposed to be your best friend!"

"You are my best friend! But..." Alex shook her head quickly, then gestured wildly with her right hand. "You also had a crush on Justin for years! I thought you'd hate me if you knew! And Justin had made me promise not to tell anyone. I've spent as much time with you as I could - hell, I've been missing you like crazy the last few months, since I haven't been going to school with you, but it didn't feel fair to tell Lexie she couldn't spend time with you outside of school, and -"

"Lexie?" Harper frowned, asked, "Who's - oh, that's the duplicate?"

"Yeah. Or she was a duplicate to start with, but... if a duplicate starts to have actual emotions, they become real. That's what happened to her. So... she's like another me. So you're her best friend too." Alex paused, then suddenly smiled. "We've actually fought about you a few times, about who'd get to go with you for things."

"Wait - you fought over me?" Harper bounced up and down, then hugged Alex for a moment. "Oh... that's so sweet! Nobody's every fought over me before!"

"Well, we did," Alex said, much more quietly. "We've got almost all the same memories, up until five months ago, so -"

Harper frowned, then pulled away from Alex and interrupted, looking at her. "If she's your duplicate, though... is she in love with Justin too?"

"No," Alex said emphatically, shaking her head. "Duplicates can be affected by what you're thinking when you make them, and when I made her, I was thinking about how weird the whole situation was, and..." She pauses a moment, then shrugged. "Somehow she came out that way." And she might be gay. Or bi. But I think I'll let Lexie tell Harper that herself.

"All right, well... I guess that makes things simpler. Is there anything else I need to know?"

"No, that's it. No more secrets, Harper." Alex smiled, then hugged Harper again. "You have no idea how much I missed being able to talk to you about things. I'm really glad to have you back." She let go and turned to go back to the ICU, but Harper spoke again.

"Uhh... is there any way to tell the two of you apart? I mean, without having to ask?"

"Not usually... but right now, I'm the one with the bruise," Alex said, gesturing to her face, then rolled her eyes. "Though we're covering that up when my parents and Max are around, so Lexie and I could switch off and both spend time with them."

"Oh - I'd meant to ask you about that," Harper said, moving closer and looking at Alex's bruise. "What happened?"

"I managed to fall on my face. And further details would embarrass both of us," Alex finished with a roll of her eyes. "So let's not go there."

"Okay," Harper answered with a nod. "You should get some arnica gel to put on it, though."

Alex laughed at that, said, "Yeah - Justin got me some, but I forgot about it, with him in the hospital. I'll put more on it tonight. Right now I'm more worried about him."

"Go back to him, then!" Harper made shooing motions. "I'll call your parents."

"Thanks," Alex said, and ran back to the ICU and Justin.

Hospitals, like any bureaucracy, work slowly. The doctors kept Justin in the ICU overnight - so Alex spent another night with Miranda. This one was a much happier evening, though, as they ate popcorn (and threw some at each other, much to Shelly's annoyance) and watched trash TV, talking about how amazingly stupid the people on the shows were.

Thursday morning, Alex went back to Justin's dorm room and gathered books, a writing tablet and pencils, and his DS and several games. She also got his own toiletries - and hers as well, since with any luck he'd have that private room and she'd be able to stay overnight with him - and some clothes.

He was finally moved to a regular room around four in the afternoon, and then there were people in and out for a good solid hour, setting up the monitoring machines, talking to him again to make sure he was recovering well, and so on. Before it was all over, Alex got the call from Lexie to say that she, Max, and Theresa were on their way over. When she left, Justin was sitting up - well, reclining, really, with the bed adjusted to hold him up - had painkillers in him, and was sounding and looking much more like himself. Minus the sling on his right arm and the shaved part of his head, of course, but Alex didn't care about that - it would grow back.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the private room that Jerry had agreed to - as it turned out, that would have been another $250 a day, and with the doctors talking about keeping Justin for a week to make sure he was healing properly, that was going to be too much, especially with them already having to close the sub shop early. As luck would have it, though, the two-bed room he was in didn't have anyone else in it right now, so it was almost as good as a private room.

Jerry, Max, and Theresa stayed until almost nine o'clock - and Lexie as well, but it was the first three whose presence limited what Alex could talk to Justin about. They offered to take Harper with them, but at Alex's prompting, she told them she wanted to stay a bit longer, and that Miranda had offered to see her home.

With it now just the four of them who were now privy to The Secret, they let Justin know that Harper had been told. He fussed, of course, but there was no way around it at this point, and faced with her grudging acceptance and promise not to tell anyone, he let it go.

"So..." Alex said, looking over to Justin during a commercial break in Big Bang Theory, "what were you doing over there when you got hit? The police said someone there said you'd just come out of Gem Pawn. What were you doing in there?"

Justin sighed at that as Alex looked at him expectantly. "They told you that? Well..." He paused, reached up behind his head to scratch there. "It was going to be a surprise, but I sold my Xbox and games."

"What?" Alex shook her head and gave Justin a puzzled look. "Okay... why?"

Taking Alex's hand, Justin smiled. "To get money for a deposit on an apartment. It's not much," he said, starting to shrug and then wincing, "ow - just a one bedroom. But we'll have a living room, and a kitchen, and the rent isn't much more than I'm paying for the dorm right now."

Alex blinked at this news, then stood up and quickly, but carefully, gave her brother a hug. "Justin, that's wonderful! Thank you!" She pulled back a little and looked into Justin's eyes, smiling at him.

"That is good," Harper put in. "You'll be able to have visitors, and decorate, and all that."

"Yeah," Justin said, nodding to Harper. Turning back to Alex, he said, "I know you haven't been happy in the dorm. And I do want you to be happy." Lifting his hand up, he caressed Alex's cheek, saying, "I love you." Miranda smiled at that, while Harper colored and looked back at the TV, still not comfortable with watching Alex and Justin being cuddly.

"I love you too," Alex said, then frowned. "But do you think it'll still be available when they let you go here?"

"We're not going to wait for me to get out of here. I'll give you the address, and you can go talk to them."

Miranda frowned at that. "How's she going to do that? She can't sign a contract, not even on your behalf - she's a minor."

"Not as my sister, no," Justin said, smiling. "But she can as my wife."

A startled "What?" came from all three girls simultaneously, and Justin's smile grew into a grin. "We have the same last name. She can go talk to them, give them the check from me, tell them she's my wife and sign the papers. If they ask her for ID, her ID says 'Alexandra Margarita Russo' - and it doesn't show marital status. And she can give me the number here so they can call me and confirm everything, if they want to. They don't have any reason not to take our word that we're married."

Harper frowned deeply and bit her lip, obviously disturbed, but Alex clapped her hands together, "You're brilliant! But there's one problem."

It was Justin's turn to frown then, as he tried to wonder what he hadn't thought of. "What's that?" he asked after a moment, not coming up with anything.

"I'm not saying it if it's not true. So we have to get married," Alex said with a decisive nod.